Nature's new achievement solves ten-year mystery and analyzes the structure of key proteins in Parkinson's disease

Australian researchers have recently solved a multi-year mystery about Parkinson's disease

For the first time, researchers took a "real scene" shot of a protein called PINK1

This discovery is the new result of an eight-year project and provides the first detailed blueprint for the discovery and development of therapeutic drugs to slow the development of Parkinson's disease

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Parkinson's disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disease caused by the death of dopamine-producing cells in the brain

Zhong Yan Gan said that this study provides an unprecedented perspective to better understand the PINK1 protein, which plays a key role in early-onset Parkinson's disease

"What we did was take a series of snapshots of proteins, and then stitch them together to make a'real scene' movie to reveal the activation process of PINK1

PINK1 marks damaged mitochondria to be destroyed and recovered, thereby protecting cells

Zhong Yan Gan said: “An important discovery of ours is that PINK1 forms a dimer, which is essential for initiating or activating proteins to perform their functions

Drug discovery

Professor Komander said these results paved the way for the development of therapeutic drugs that "turn on" PINK1 to treat Parkinson's disease

Failure of PINK1 or other components in the pathway is considered a key feature of some cases of Parkinson's disease

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Gan, ZY, Callegari, S.